Friday, August 27, 2010

Challenge Day

Workout of the Day

WOD 1 – in the afternoon

CrossGym Challenge:

30 thrusters (50 kg)

30 pullups

WOD 2 – in the evening

Faceoff Challenge:

2 x 50 m run

50 squat thruster with pushup

4 x 50 m run

50 OH step up w/ 20 kg (40 cm step)

6 x 50 m run

50 leg raise to 20 kg target

4 x 50 m run

50 box jump (40 cm)

2 x 50 m run

50 thruster (20 kg)

2 x 50 m bear crawl

I arrived in Copenhagen this morning just after 5am on the bus from Amsterdam. Between the German border patrol, the vehicle switch in Hamburg, and the ferry ride across the channel, there wasn’t much sleep to be had during those 15 hours. But I managed a nap here at Sarah’s when I arrived and, overall, wasn’t feeling too bad. Tomorrow may be another story.

For the CrossGym challenge, I headed over to CrossFit Denmark to meet up with Oliver, Mathias, and a couple of the guys I had met and trained with back in November. Really great seeing them again. We warmed up with some power cleans and chatted a bit about what everyone had been up to, then we dove in. I had no real idea how the thrusters were going to feel so I figured I would go for broke and try my best to get them unbroken. Turned out not to be too much of a problem. I think I paused after the 27th repetition for a second, but that was it. I dropped the bar and Sarah yelled 1:06.

At this point I knew I could finish under 2 minutes if I didn’t die on the pullup bar. Wasting little time I grabbed it and started butterflying. My only thought here was to be REALLY aggressive on my pulls and to finish every rotation. I was feeling good until 19 or 20, then things started to get a little heavy. I threw in a few standard kips and had to drop after 24. Short break and I got back up for the final 6, finishing in 1:49. Happy with this time and looking forward to seeing what everyone else can do.

The evening WOD had been posted by Sven earlier in the week but I hadn’t been able to do it until today. I grabbed another nap just before and did my best to get my energy up. Thankfully with this type of WOD, high energy is not always your friend so I wasn’t missing too much advantage. My goal was to run fast. I figured the high repetition stuff would slow me down quite a bit in comparison with Sven since he is more used to it than I, so I knew my best chance was to make up time in the running. This proved to work well. The hardest portions were the overhead step ups and the thrusters by far. The squat thruster pushups were tough but not bad, the leg raises no problem, and the box jumps manageable. The other two really destroyed me and left me thinking that I might not finish this thing fast enough. By the time I reached the bear crawls I was pretty devastated but my time was still good. I pushed until failure on the crawls about 6 times before I got to the finish line and heard my time was 15:10, beating Sven’s 15:37 by just under :30. This felt GREAT.

I’m ready for sleep now, and it will be well deserved. I’ve attached links to both challenge WODs below. Have at them and submit them to both sites.

Cross Gym

Blair vs Sven

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